Archive for the ‘Just plain bad’ Category

Previous posts will attest to my addiction to Indian food, and my sorrow at finding a poor selection in Brussels (well, I’m a Brit, I have high standards). There is one right near my office that I have never tried, however, and a group of colleagues and I set out to rectify this one Friday. One colleague had already tried it a few times and had been satisfied with the food – nothing amazing…. but good. Reviews on the websites told of very long waits for deliveries, and inaccurate order content. I was rather apprehensive.

We went at lunchtime and were the only people in the restaurant. The greeting was slow to come and very cool. We did not feel welcomed. The menus were haphazard (mine was almost empty, I had to share with my neighbour). They took a long time to come and take our orders and were rather uninformative on the fixed menu of the day (chicken tikka masala according to the blackboard outside). Orders placed, and drinks delivered, we settled down a bit more. We waited almost an hour for food. During this time we saw 2 deliveries leave and pondered calling in our order to see if we could get it faster! When the food finally arrived, it did not all arrive together. One colleague had taken the menu and got her curry but no rice. This took an extra 10 minutes to arrive, so we shared out other rice to compensate. A friend and I were sharing 3 ‘side dishes’ and the last one came so much later, we had finished the first two and most of the naan. No apologies were offered.

Naan bread

All that said.. what about the food. Well, these are the naan. Not bad, but not great.

Aubergine curry

This is the aubergine curry we had, which was pleasantly spiced, tomatoey and fresh.

Mushroom curry

The mushrooms with curry leaves was a creamy delight – my favourite dish at the table. Nothing was very spicy, most of the sauces were too sweet and the whole meal felt unsatisfying due to the long wait and the lousy service. I’m afraid we did not tip and I will not be going back. Maybe a delivery… but I’ll order 1 hour before I want to eat!

I wrote the below post a week or two ago, and after returning to this place for a Sunday afternoon snack, I have to review it and add some comments. I mention below that the service could do with some improvement as it never polite to tell customers that they should “hurry up”. Well, the level of rudeness went up a notch today when the waiter told us we hadn’t ordered much at all (c’est pas grande chose). I think it took me a moment to register how rude this was, by which time he had already left. Two of us weren’t eating, but had ordered milkshakes. I wasn’t allowed to order a side of fries (which apparently can only be ordered if you order a main dish). The other waiter who was clearing dishes, insisted we had to order with our own waiter (he couldn’t even pass along the message that we wanted the bill). Since I work in a customer-oriented industry myself, I can only say this type of treatment is completely inappropriate. You don’t take out your frustration/tiredness/negative emotions on your customers – who are paying! I don’t care if this place were a Michelin star, top-notch place (which it isn’t): I WON’T BE GOING BACK. I regret that I even spent 5 euros on a milkshake there today.

Previous post:

Ah milkshakes and burgers, the classics of the American diner. And that is exactly what you get at the Balmoral Milk Bar, in Place Brugmann. With Grease playing in the background (including French subtitles), the cozy diner with the bright pink seats is packed on a Sunday around lunchtime. Part of the attraction is surely the kids play corner in the back. The other part must be the yummy chocolate milkshakes (the red berries and yogurt is also excellent). The country club sandwich (10 euros) and the burgers (11 euros) are good: delicious, hearty and good sized-portions with quality ingredients. The burgers are served with American-style potato wedges which are a definite crowd-pleaser. Not recommended are the chilli-con-carne which lacked carne (we also got ours minus the cheese and onions mentioned on the menu and had to ask the waitress about the omission). The fajitas are also recommended (choice of chicken, beef or mixed meat with sides including delicious, fresh guacamole ~17 euros). The cheesecake (4 euros) was also very good: light and fluffy. The only problem was that it tasted more like a lime key pie than a cheesecake. All in all, I would definitely go back. The downside of going on a Sunday is that it was so packed that the waitress asked us to hurry up with our dessert order as our table was reserved after us. It’s never nice to be rushed through a course, even if its only dessert.

We were sidetracked by the crowd sitting on the terrace in the sun. We were searching for a pasta restaurant we had heard a lot about, but ended up at Le Comptoir instead, lured in by the sign outside “Chilli Burger – 9 Euros”, “Hamburger – 9 Euros” and the full terrace. Did we really want pasta? We decided to just give this place a try. It looked new and the terrace was full of people.

It is probably always better to stick with your original plan, otherwise you end up with: so-so burgers, poor service, bad cocktails and a taste of disappointment. The main point of irritation was the service. The cocktails were watered down and while we should have received either two-for-one (it was happy hour) or half-price on the bill, we received neither. We received the bill with the full price of the cocktail (7 euros), the second one listed as “offered” but which we had never received. We really couldn’t be bothered to ask for our second watered-down cocktail. The hamburgers were so-so, at 9 Euros you can’t really expect out-of-this world burgers in Brussels. They were good as a snack and that’s about it. Next time I return to St. Boniface, I will gave this place a miss as there are far better places to eat and drink.

Remember those German cheeseburgers-in-a-can? The ones that were rumored to be extremely nasty? Well, the one in my living room expired a week ago, which naturally meant that it had to be eaten. Here’s a summary in ten pictures. Conclusions follow.

Popped open the other side and shucked it out. Dry bread! Someone said his hands now smelled like meat. Someone else said they smelled like poo. Someone had better have been wrong.

No campfire, so into the microwave it went! Our volunteer requested the "nuclear" setting, but we just settled for "high" for 30 seconds...

...and it came out steaming! Appetizing, no?

Modern art: the empty can.

Oh. My. God.

I shuddered at this point. (Click the photos to expand!)

What goes better with a cheeseburger from a can than a glass of fine French red wine, of course? No ketchup or other condiments were added, in order not to taint the subtle flavors carefully engineered using the best in German technology.

Chompin' down. He did his best.

He didn't finish.

Our excellent volunteer with a steel stomach concluded a few points about this thing:

1. It’s better than Quick.
2. The meat actually tasted like meat.
3. The meat also tasted like paper.
4. The “cheese” had plenty of something awful.
5. If you were stuck in the woods somewhere and had this canned burger, you could eat it without dying.

So there you go. Not good at all, but in the end, you could do worse. Three cheers for German innovation!

I call BS. Around lunchtime at La Terrasse by Merode, a sign clearly indicated that mussels were available inside, and my friends visiting from outside Belgium had quite the hankering for some mussels.

When we sat down on the pleasant outdoor terrace surrounded by hedges and asked for them, the waitress said that unfortunately they had just run out. C’est dommage! So instead we ordered the carbonnade (~12 euros), which is, for the record, visually appealing but much better elsewhere.

Ten minutes into our meal, a bunch of francophones came in to eat, and lo and behold, they received a bucket of mussels.

Blast! No mussels, my queue.

Maybe they had pre-ordered the mussels before coming in, but I don’t know. Maybe the afternoon waitress doesn’t like foreigners. Despite the charming atmosphere, the quality of the food is hit-or-miss here, anyway, so this adds one more reason to skip eating here sometimes. They once replaced the burger meat with a slab of meatloaf, which was pretty bad. Then again, the fried chicken burger is good. Ah, consistently inconsistent.